I'm in an awful situation that a boy by the name of Bellew got me into.
He is one of the boys that writes stories and makes pictures for
HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, and I think people ought to know what kind of a
boy he is. A little while ago he had a story in the YOUNG PEOPLE about
imitation screw-heads, and how he used to make them, and what fun he had
pasting them on his aunt's bureau. I thought it was a very nice story,
and I got some tin-foil and made a whole lot of screw-heads, and last
Saturday I thought I'd have some fun with them.
Father has a dreadfully ugly old chair in his study, that General
Washington brought over with him in the _Mayflower_, and Mr. Travers
says it is stiffer and uglier than any of the Pilgrim fathers. But
father thinks everything of that chair, and never lets anybody sit in it
except the minister. I took a piece of soap, just as that Bellew used
to, and if his name is Billy why don't he learn how to spell it that's
what I'd like to know, and made what looked like a tremendous crack in
the chair. Then I pasted the screw-heads on the chair, and it looked
exactly as if somebody had broken it and tried to mend it.
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I couldn't help laughing all day when I thought how astonished father
would be when he saw his chair all full of screws, and how he would
laugh when he found out it was all a joke. As soon as he came home I
asked him to please come into the study, and showed him the chair and
said "Father I cannot tell a lie I did it but I won't do it any more."
[Illustration]
Father looked as if he had seen some disgusting ghosts, and I was really
frightened, so I hurried up and said, "It's all right father, it's only
a joke look here they all come off," and rubbed off the screw-heads and
the soap with my handkerchief, and expected to see him burst out
laughing, just as Bellew's aunt used to burst, but instead of laughing
he said, "My son this trifling with sacred things must be stopped," with
which remark he took off his slipper, and then-- But I haven't the heart
to say what he did. Mr. Travers has made some pictures about it, and
perhaps people will understand what I have suffered.
I think that boy Bellew ought to be punished for getting people into
scrapes. I'd just like to have him come out behind our barn with me for
a few minutes. That is, I would, only I never expect to take any
interest in anything any more. My heart is broken and a new chocolate
cigar that was in my pocket during the awful scene.
I've got an elegant wasps' nest with young wasps in it that will hatch
out in the spring, and I'll change it for a bull-terrier or a shot-gun
or a rattlesnake in a cage that rattles good with any boy that will send
me one.